


The Day Chivalry Curled Up and Died

by unknowableroom_archivist



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-11-01
Updated: 2009-05-30
Packaged: 2019-01-19 15:00:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12412536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unknowableroom_archivist/pseuds/unknowableroom_archivist
Summary: CHAPTER 2:EDITED! Lily extracts a promise from James that he will leave her alone and all for the low low price of one tiny, insignificant, meaningless kiss. Only, Lily seems to be having difficulty upholding the terms of their agreement.





	1. A Man Of His Word

**Author's Note:**

> Note from ChristyCorr, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [Unknowable Room](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Unknowable_Room), a Harry Potter archive active from 2005-2016. To preserve the archive, I began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project after May 2017. I e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on [Unknowable Room collection profile](http://www.archiveofourown.org/collections/unknowableroom).

Disclaimer: All of it is mine - The Harry Potter-verse, the letter D, the colour red… and the entire McDonalds chain. I even bought the rights to all the Beatles songs from one Michael Jackson in exchange for some baby photos of me in the bath... ;)

Pairing: Lily/James

Summery: “Hard and fast, just the way you like it, Evans.” “I am fairly certain you wouldn’t have the faintest idea how I’d ‘ _like it,’_ Potter!” Lily/James. Illicit smoochies. WIP.

A/N: I always thought the most unrealistic part of the Harry Potter universe, you know besides the whole wizarding shtick was the fact that characters never swore… Maybe it’s cause I’m Australian and we all swear like sailors down here but I thought I’d inject a little of my own reality into the story. I apologise if any of the readership find this offensive or not in keeping with the books. 

I am new to this fandom and ship… and because I came in late in the game this was originally posted at the dreaded and satanic FFNET before I realised all the cool kids were over here! :) 

**Edited:** Special thanks to Miranda (AnotherDreamer) for the BETA! If there was an Olympic event for genuine loveliness and expert BETA-ness, she’d win gold! Despite my exams, I couldn’t bare to leave my glaring spelling issues as is and leave her good work gathering dust in my inbox so I uploaded the edited version. Now the chapter has 15% more kiss! 

 

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**The Day Chivalry Curled Up and Died**

 

 

Chapter 1: A Man of His Word

 

 

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“Sorry I’m late.”

James Potter looked a lot of things as he breezed into the small classroom with his Quidditch robes ten itches deep in mud; cocky, reckless… disarmingly attractive but he did _not_ look sorry. Bringing in with him that new morning smell; cut grass, the warm day to come and something uniquely him, she could appreciate why people found that self-assured grace attractive.

Cue the apocalypse. She’d finally let herself think it: James Potter was attractive.

Especially mid-flight, poised sinuously on his broom, face wracked with concentration and muscles rippling with exertion… He would be damn near perfect in every conceivable way, _if_ he didn’t redefine the words ‘insufferable fuckwit’ every time he opened his mouth.

He swiftly removed the outer layer of his clothes and she had to ball fistfuls of her robe under the table to stop her brain pressing the fast forward button and picturing him in decidedly less.

She desperately wanted to be swimming in the sheets of her canopy bed rather than swimming in lusty thoughts of a scantily clad Potter as she sat next to the reality, a thoroughly clothed version, through a Heads meeting at the ungodly hour of 7.30 on a Saturday morning.

Attempting cold and detached, she inwardly tried to suppress that warm feeling low in her belly.

”Professor McGonagall can’t make it. So for my sanity, let’s make this quick and painless.”

Her clipped business-like tone was accompanied with downcast eyes that never left the pieces of parchment on the table.

“Hard and fast, just the way you like it, Evans.” He leered at her, straddling the chair next to her and scooting closer to her person.

“I am fairly certain you wouldn’t have the faintest idea how I’d _‘like it_ , _’_ Potter.” She punctuated the words bitingly and flung a stack of papers down on the table in front of him.

“Let's do these Prefects’ Rosters with as little interaction as possible,” she added decidedly, maintaining distant frigidity. Her chair scraped noisily on the parquetry as she tried to re-establish some space between them.

“Get in… and get out. Got it,” he replied, nodding knowingly, his voice once again laced with unmistakable innuendo.

Scowling, she buried her nose into the pieces of parchment and scribbled furiously. If enduring and maintaining civility with one James Potter meant that she had to deal with his woeful attempts to bed her and generally make her uncomfortable then she _would_ stab him in the eye with her quill by meeting’s end.

But, she reasoned, cold-blooded murder and death-by-writing utensil wouldn’t really do much for her job prospects at the end of the year, especially if her victim of choice was the Hogwart’s fucking golden boy. So she sat deathly quiet, squirming inside, thinking about ways to disembowel him (“and,” the little voice said in the back of her head, “then kissing it better.”) 

                                                ____________________________________________________

 

The silence was deafening. And she kept throwing him these scathing looks, as if trying to flirt with her was a crime against humanity.

“Evans, why are we doing this the long way? “ he admonished teasingly. “You’re Flitwick’s bitch, can’t you just charm these lists into existence?”

Her pursed-lipped silence only spurred him on.

“Anyone would think that you were trying to get me alone to have your wicked way with me.”

She tried to bite her tongue, she r _eally_ did. But when he looked at her that way, somewhere between curiosity and puzzling familiarity, she surged with some indescribably urge to take him down a few notches.

“That’s exactly right, Potter. I mean, I don’t want anyone around when I’m dumping your body.”

He laughed off the hidden sting of her words and patted her hand good-naturedly.

“Are you coming to the game tomorrow?” he asked, as if the question was a logical progression from swapping insult for innuendo.

“Anything that involves the possibility of you falling off your broom to meet an untimely and horrific end, count me in on,” she retorted with infuriating disinterest.

Sometimes he couldn’t take the hint. Sometimes she didn’t want him to.

“I didn’t know you cared. But you needn’t worry about me. I’m a big boy… a _very_ big boy,” he added saucily and watched her face contort into an expression of disgust. She grumbled incoherently and her eyes did a slow rotation of their sockets.

Once again, silence overwhelmed them to the faint sound of scratching quills against course paper.

He drew up the next list without any further attempts to test her patience. In truth, he was a little distracted. Lily and Quidditch, he breathed in the prospect, in all its delicious implications and blessed his vivid imagination. 

Such a pretty picture he painted, of her, of them. They were soaring through clouds, the wind causing her hair to float around her as if she was underwater. She was pressed into him, flush against his front, his arms slipped around her waist to grasp her small hands around the handle of the broomstick, her head cradled in the crook of his neck and her breath tickling him when she laughed. 

“I’ve never seen you fly.” His voice, almost ragged, broke over the silence. The smile still lingered at the corners of his mouth, his wayward thoughts still playing out inside his head.

“There’s a reason. I’ve never flown,” she retorted with irritation, looking pointedly at his discarded list and quill.

“You’ve never flown before? Ever?” He found it near impossible to keep the incredulity from his voice. Absently, he picked up the quill and spun it in his fingers.

“Nope.” She didn’t look up this time, her eyes scanning a section of parchment McGonagall had left as if her life depended on its contents.

“How have you made it seven years at Hogwarts without stepping on a broom?” he asked, smiling through his surprise.

“This concept will be foreign to you, Potter, but after I refused a couple of times, people started to take the hint.” Her words dripped with sarcasm but her gaze remained fixed on the desk in front of her, making a show of organising the sheets of parchment into even piles.

This hostile and aloof demeanor seemed to fall on deaf ears.

“You’ll have to let me take you out flying sometime then.” He shot her an uncertain look, eyebrows raised in question, barely concealing his eagerness.

His hesitation threw her. And that smile was oddly unsettling.

“Why?” She looked at him quizzically, trying to discern his motive.

He didn’t seem to catch her annoyance because his next words, in such low tones, were nearly enough to undo her.

“Because I think you’d enjoy it. The wind whipping through your hair, your body pumping with adrenaline” His gaze was penetrating but he seemed very far away. His voice dipped lower, “And you can see for miles and miles… chasing the horizon on the wings of outstretched arms…” He trailed off and had the sense to look mildly embarrassed.

It was hard not to be taken in by his words.

“I… I’m not really one for heights,” she stammered dimly, inwardly berating herself for seeming affected.

“You can hold on tight to me then,” he suggested, grinning roguishly, blinking back images of his daydream.

“I think I’ll pass,” she managed somewhat dryly.

“Forget the flying part then. You can just hold onto me tightly with your feet on the ground.” He flashed her a perfect row of white teeth but his words rang almost tender.

“Does strangling come into that equation at all?” she retorted, regaining some of her previous archness.

“I knew you couldn’t wait to get your hands on me, Evans.”

“What will it take to get you to shut up?” she seethed.

“You can gag me while we paw at each other in the supplies closet?” He grinned and gestured to the cupboard door that was slightly ajar behind them.

“That’d be a cold day in hell, Potter,”

“I'm sure we’d find ways to keep warm,” he countered with another leering grin.

She groaned in frustration but that only seemed to provoke him further.

“Too much too fast? But then, I thought you liked it fast, Evans?”

Her sharpened quill gleamed encouragingly up at her and she teetered on the brink of running with the aforementioned death-by-writing-utensil plan.

“Seriously, what will get you to leave me alone?”

His heart beat erratically against his ribcage at her cheeks burning prettily, her eyes blazing and her full cherry lips pursed together tightly.

“--A kiss… On the mouth,” he supplied quickly, his smile wide and dangerous.

She scoffed and sent him a perfunctory chance-in-hell look.

He tried to organise his thoughts and scrambled to form them into a coherent sentence.

“And… I’ll leave you alone…Won’t speak a word to you outside formal Head duties and schoolwork for”— and here he swallowed thickly –“the rest of the year.”

His eyes were trained on the soft slope of her bottom lip and he willed himself to look up to meet her expression of doubtful disdain.

“If you th---“ But something stopped her, causing her to trail off inelegantly mid-sentence. She was caught between the stupid pathetic niggling attraction that _would not_ leave her and the thought of a virtually Potter-less existence. One without his sexually laced barbs, his relentless flirting, his teasing and her humiliating and unauthorised inclusion in those stupid pranks him and his friends pulled.

An existence which would signal an end to her perpetual boyfriend drought because of that _big_ **_fat_ ** invisible stamp on her forehead that said she was spoken for, that Potter had some sort of claim on her.

An existence, which would mean a professional and efficient working relationship between the Head boy and Head girl, free of any of Potter’s Potter-y Potter-esque Potter-isms…

He was a jackass, yes, but he was notorious for keeping his end of a bargain. It was the Gryffindor pumping in his veins, running through his big beating excuse for a heart that saw him always true to his word.

“On the hand?” she offered hopefully, somewhat lamely.

“No offence, Evans, but for 200 or so days free of my attentions, I’d be looking for a different kind of ‘hand’ action.”

She gritted her teeth and stared at him fiercely.

“On the feet?” she suggested tartly, sounding utterly ridiculous and smiling in spite of herself.

“Wasn’t there a tinea outbreak that came from the Gryffindor girl’s shower block?” he questioned playfully and she rolled her eyes lightly. Suddenly, she realized their proximity. Somehow, he’d managed during the course of their conversation to reclaim any space between them.

“On the cheek?” she offered weakly, chewing nervously at her bottom lip at the prospect. The thought of his lips anywhere near hers produced somersaults in her stomach. Where had her resolve gone? Why were her knuckles white with panic?

There was a long pause and her breath hitched at the palpable shift in mood, tiny hairs on the back of her neck standing on end from the shiver than ran through her.

The room seemed to be closing in as he moved towards her slowly. Her eyes flitted between his lips and his dark eyes. Her own lips parted softly in anticipation.

Inches from her ear, he whispered something, his voice like velvet.

“Cheek it is, but I’m warning you, I have terrible aim,” his words resonated with a teasing lilt but he looked at her hungrily.

“The Quidditch captain has… terrible aim?” She was trying for ‘high and mighty’ but the string of words ran together in a lustful sigh.

She’d been denying her attraction for months, hiding behind professions of loathing and her own thoughts of disembowelment. But in that moment, feeling his warm breath against her cheek, his soft touch run down her arm, his knee pushed intimately against the side of her leg, something between them shifted.

He answered her with the tip of his nose, tracing the arch of her ear before touching the rim with his lips. Her eyes fluttered closed and her breath caught in her throat discernibly as his lips traversed the journey from the nape of her neck to the curving swerve of her jaw, trailing along the soft downy expanse until he arrived at the corner of her lips.

The lingering contact was like a helium buzz in the brain, it was unencumbered sensation and something surged up inside of her, pressed her palm roughly against his cheek and lowered his lips to meet hers. His hot mouth moved against hers, slow and soft and wet. She felt the electric tip of his tongue run along the length of her top lip and barely suppressed a shudder of pleasure. His large hand moved to cup her cheek while the other grasped lightly at her elbow. 

Somehow though, she seemed to feel his exquisite touch everywhere else; caressing the soft skin of her stomach, the small of her back, sliding under her skirt. It was like flying, a kind of fleeing, a kind of falling.

Falling higher and higher, over the castle, over the school grounds, over the great lake, the mountains, the patchwork quilt of fields, the tiny pinpricks of farms and the houses in the villages. It was freeing, this flight. Just like he’d said.

The old rules she had built up between them seemed no longer binding, right spilled over in wrong, order into chaos, self-control into wild abandon, loathing into… lov…

No. Not that.

She broke away abruptly and she stared at him dazed, thoroughly kissed. She felt like she’d just stepped out of time and her eyes widened in horror at her actions.

“God! What is wrong with you?”

She left him no opening to answer, making her escape in a rustle of robe and parchment.

The sound of her shoes, as she broke into a run, echoed down the shadowy corridor. 

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Show me some love and review. Then in return for that love, I’ll update. Cause and effect dear readers, cause and effect. 


	2. Fast Times at Hogwart's High

_ This is an edited version of what I published yesterday. I hated what I put here yesterday, specifically the last scene. If you’re already read this part, please re-read it. It’s quite changed. (I know, aren’t I ridiculous...)  _

__

_ \----------- _

__

_ Yes. My update mentality sucks. Yes I’m a terrible person. I’m working on that. ;)  _

_ Also, I haven’t spoken to my beta reader in two years and don’t even know if she’s still in the fandom. (Hi Miranda!) So this is unbeta’ed... I felt so crap about how much time this took to get out so thought I’d just upload it and get it over with. There's bound to be mistakes, if they're are too painful to leave in as is... let me know. _

_ (The last scene was inspired by a certain room in Book 4. You’ll know the one.)  _

_ __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ _

** Chapter 2: Fast Times at Hogwarts High **

_ __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ _

The acid blue sky was dazzling and distinctly unseasonal. She couldn’t resist opening the dormitory window, positioning herself along the windowsill and daggling one knee-socked leg between the grate and over its edge. 

She felt the sun, beating down on her, and if she closed her eyes, it was almost as if she was home in Surrey and she was the beanpole of her 8 year old self, sprawled out next to a chalk drawing, the summer sun melting her into the concrete sidewalk, the occasional plane casting shadows on the pavement as they flew overhead. Her thoughts wandered and walked her back to that morning last week, in the transfiguration classroom where the streaks of morning sun caughtthe dust particles floating in the air around them. He was kissing her. She was kissing him back. This time she was rewriting the ending and they were speaking new lines in soft tongues. His impatient hands pushed past her heavy school robes, slipping under her shirt, cool fingertips skimming the velvet expanse of her back, then skillfully unhooking her bra. She felt the hot caress of naughty words against the shell of her ear, whispering them back and then…

"Oi, Evans, don’t jump!”

The words were jarring and broke her reverie. Sirius Black squinted up at her from the courtyard below with a lazy grin, broom slung over his shoulder, bound most likely for the Quidditch field.

“I know working with James is enough to drive anyone to jump out their dormitory window but think of all the things you still have to look forward to, Evans. All those big heavy books to read and, of course, the day you finally succumb to my charms.”

"What charms, Black? Don’t move! Maybe I can take you out with me… kill you in my descent," she shouted down to him grinning wickedly.

"Well, what a way to go, huh? Underneath you, Evans." His words boomed up at her and she thanked the stars that nearly everyone old enough to understand Black’s comments were at Hogsmeade.

“How is it, Black, that you haven’t gotten  syphilis and died?”

“ Is that what you gave me that night?” he leered. 

“ God I hope so.” She shouted back, smiling sweetly down at him, but inwardly wondered why she  was willingly engaging in this fucked up excuse for flirtation with Hogwart’s most notorious Lothario. 

She heard the sound of approaching footsteps and then Potter came into view, joining Siruis below her. He gave a polite wave with barely a hint of a smile. This is what their interaction had been reduced to; perfunctory greetings. She felt the heat come to her cheeks and returned the gesture, equally as strained. Siruis seemed oblivious to the tension running between them, or at the very least, amused by it and made no move to signal the end of the shouting match he probably considered a conversation. 

“Why aren’t you up in Hogsmeade with everyone else?” Sirius bellowed up at her and both he and James looked up at her expectantly.

Because, she cursed to herself, she had been trying to avoid running into Potter, hadn’t she?

She called down to the pair, trying to keep her voice light, but it sounded forced, even to her own ears. “I was planning to but I thought I’d better make a start on my…” She struggled to think of something, anything.

“…daydream?” Sirius finished for her cheekily, “Okay, well, for authenticity’s sake, James is a boxers man not briefs.”

She smiled sarcastically and mentally kicked herself. 

“Thanks. I’ll keep a good thought,” she managed to deadpan, desperate to play down how accurately Sirius had read her thoughts. 

She knew she was being ridiculous and that her attempts at avoidance were beyond stupid and immature, but every time she saw him, she was taken back to that empty tranfiguration classroom. She was reminded of that brief moment, where he hadn’t been Potter and she hadn’t been Evans and they didn’t have to hate eachother.

They said goodbye and she watched as the two boys walked across the school over towards the Quidditch pitch. 

_ __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ _

“It’s not that I don’t appreciate your attempts to fix things between Evans...” James started uneasily. 

Sirius was grinning madly. James took the bait. 

“What?”

“Oh, Spare me James, you’re _glad_ I prolonged the conversation… the way she was sitting you could totally see up her skirt.”

There was confirmation in his silence. 

_ __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ _

The prefect bathroom reminded her of an old Roman Bath; the columns, the high ceiling, ornate tiling. There were no windows and the room was lit only by a few solitary candles. She swam the length of the large bath as if it was a lap pool and then floated on her black like a corpse in the now tepid water. The reflection of the candlelight flickered off the surface, casting strange wobbling shadows along the walls. She played with the taps on the side of the bath and soon the small pool was filled with tiny foamy bubbles and the air was thick with steam. She stretched out lazily, feeling relaxed for the first time in a week. Who knows how long she lay floating there, luxuriating in the steaming water, feeling the warmth seep into her muscles. 

Suddenly, she heard a strange strangled sound behind her. She opened her eyes warily. 

Muddy and grass stained, sweaty and flushed, his face was streaked with dirt. His mud-splattered Quidditch robes had been kicked into a messy pile in the corner. 

No no no.

She dove under the water. Her mind was screaming. 

Jumbles of expletives. 

No no no no. 

Every bad word she’d ever heard. 

No no no no. 

And then the words...

White.

Cotton. 

Boxers.

Her lungs began burning with stale air and survival instinct kicked in. She took a giant gulp as she broke through the surface.

He hadn’t moved. 

“YOU. HAVE. SOME. NERVE!” she was gasping for air but somehow her voice had managed to skip a few octaves. 

He blinked slowly at her, his mouth parted ever so slightly, utterly bewildered. 

“How… HOW dare you!!YOU FOLLOWED ME IN HERE?!! I thought you were capable of some pretty low depths, Potter, but this?? You’re perverted.... YOU’RE SICK!” 

She was crouching low in the water, sinking into the bubbles, trying her best to cover herself with her arms.

“HEY!” 

“Did you think that if you caught me with my clothes off, that I’d let something happen here?? Just because I let you kiss me once doesn’t give you leave to have sex with me!!?”

“What are you TALKING about!??”

“I should have KNOWN you’d do this! I should have known you’d pull this kind of stunt! You’re... you’re... PATHETIC!” 

“Evans, listen-” 

“TURN. AROUND!!!” she screeched. 

“Evans...”

“AT LEAST LET ME KEEP MY LAST SHRED OF DIGNITY BY HANDING ME A TOWEL.” 

He moved wordlessly over to a small bench where the house elves had laid out a neat pile of fluffy white towels.

“DON’T EVEN THINK ABOUT TURNING AROUND AGAIN POTTER” she threatened shrilly, spitting his name out like it was a dirty word. 

“Oh for fucks sake...” she heard him mumbled under his breath. 

Holding the towel above his head like a white flag of surrender, he made deliberate and exaggerated steps backwards towards the edge of the bath. Her image was burning the backs of his eyelids; pink limbed, pearly and damp, her long hair painting dark strands across her face and then fanning out around her in the water like petals.

She was like some damn fucking poem, wasn’t she? Floating there on her back, wearing that aggravating secret smile. Like some hot naked Mona Lisa. That secret smile, he played it over and over again.  Like a skipping record in his brain. 

The room was still clouded in steam and this had left the floor tiles slick with condensation.

He felt his feet fly out from under him and experienced himself falling as if it was happening in slow motion, frame by frame. He tried to steady himself but felt the sharp twist as he fell awkwardly on his ankle and then the crack of his head as it hit the side of the bath. He tumbled clumsily into the water. Disorientated, he seemed to tangle himself up in his own limbs. His eyes snapped open and he saw the world through a watery oscillating mirror. And he saw _her_.  Or maybe he just wanted to see her so badly that he made himself believe. 

Tiny air bubbles beading on her breasts like pearls. 

One perfect winking navel. 

An anemone flower undulating in deep sea silence.  

The seconds stretched on and on and on and then all at once his feet found the bottom of the bath and he propelled himself out of the water. 

She hadn’t moved but her wide eyes betrayed her panic. 

 “Are you... are you bleeding?” she asked, both quiet and anxious. 

“I don’t think so.” 

He noticed the motion of the water and small waves lapping at the edge of the bath before he realised she was moving towards him. The water was high here but she held her arms modestly over her chest. 

“Let me see?”  

He closed his eyes, partly in politeness but mostly in sheer panic and turned his head slightly so she could inspect the damage. 

He felt a shaky hand touch the back of his head and then her silky fingers tracing delicate lines down his neck. 

“It’s fine," she whispered. 

He waited for her to move away. Instead, he felt her rise up on her tip toes and then her cool lips descend on his throat. 

She could feel his pulse thumping furiously beneath her lips as she placed feathery kisses along his jawbone, following that same path he had taken in the classroom, to his mouth. She parted her lips slightly and brushed the tip of her tongue against his teeth. Suddenly, he became aware that  aware that every part of her soft form was pressed up against him and  she was moving in a way that made him forget all about the pounding... in his head. 

“Lily...” he breathed, husky and uneven. 

And all at once she seemed to remember herself. 

She froze. 

She fell back, exhaling heavily. 

The silence seemed unending and she wouldn’t look at him.

“You should probably go to the hospital wing. You might have a concussion...” she said and trailed off uneasily, retreating to the other side of the bath. 

 “Thanks.” He didn’t sound very grateful. “You mind turning round?” 

“Oh... Sorry.” 

She heard him push himself up, out of the water and saw the small ripples chase each-other to the edge.  She wouldn’t think about it. No, she wouldn’t! About how tiny droplets of water would be running down his body, how the white cotton would cling to every part of him, how, in its sodden state, it would have turned ever-so-slightly... 

The door slammed.

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_ A/N:  _

_ Who ever thought someone would use the words “limp form” to describe James. Though I tried my best to undo the damage later. No prizes to guess why he wanted her to turn around.  _

_ And no, he didn’t know she was in there initially. I had a couple of backstories but it just made the chapter so cluttered... about a magical lock or how Lily was supposed to use a locking charm but forgot. So if you were wondering about that... there’s your backstory.  _

_ And... the fonts on my document preview are all funny... Sorry I don't know how to fix it for you.  _


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